Across U.S., Redistricting as a Never-Ending Battle

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

Published: July 1, 2003

Correction Appended

AUSTIN, Tex., June 30—
For most of the past century, redistricting has been a fairly predictable though often contentious ritual. Every 10 years, state legislators would use the new census data to redraw Congressional district lines, and the party in power would usually manage to draw maps that gave it an advantage.

Now, thanks to a determined effort by United States Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, with the quiet support of the White House, that tradition may be crumbling, as legislatures draw new districts whenever they have a partisan advantage.

Today, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature opened an extraordinary special session devoted solely to redrawing the state's 32 Congressional districts. If Republicans succeed in doing so, they could remove five or more Democratic congressmen and help their party consolidate its hold on power in Washington.

Republicans did much the same thing last month in Denver, pushing a new map through the Colorado Legislature specifically to shore up the seat of a freshman congressman who won office with a 121-vote margin. And Democrats are threatening retaliation in New Mexico and Oklahoma, while dropping hints about taking the redistricting battle to big-game territory: Illinois and California, where far more seats are at stake.

This amped-up partisanship on the state level could soon make redistricting battles a recurring feature of the political landscape, experts say, reviving the 19th-century practice of redrawing political maps every time a legislature changed hands.

Democrats warn of an even more corrosive effect if local governments, too, begin to treat redistricting as simply another arrow in the quiver of political tactics.

State Representative Garnet F. Coleman, Democrat of Houston, said, ''This would be like on any city council, if they said, 'We're going to redistrict because nobody likes Joe -- the majority of us just don't like him,' and guess what, Joe's constituents can't even stop it.''

Mr. DeLay, a former Texas legislator himself, has been candid about his reasons for pushing for a new Congressional map, telling reporters at one point, ''I'm the majority leader, and we want more seats.''

In Colorado, the last three days of the state legislative session were roiled in May when, with Karl Rove, the president's top strategist, lobbying lawmakers by telephone, Republicans pushed through a new Congressional map. It gave Bob Beauprez, a Republican who narrowly won election to Congress last fall, a district with a 29,000-vote Republican edge in registration, and excluded from it the home of Mike Feeley, the Democrat he had narrowly defeated.

The Democratic attorney general, Ken Salazar, has challenged the redistricting with a lawsuit.

While the turmoil in Colorado received little notice, the battle in Texas captured national attention last month, when 51 Democratic members of the state House fled in chartered buses to Ardmore, Okla., holing up in a Holiday Inn for four days until a crucial procedural deadline passed. By denying Republicans a quorum, they killed a redistricting bill for the moment, but the ploy came at a price in scorn from late-night comedians and seemed to alienate many Texans.

The special session called by Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, could last 30 days, making a similar run for the border impractical. Democrats are saying that they will make their stand in Austin, come what may.

But public opinion in Texas could shift in their favor as the special session -- and its $1.7 million cost, weeks after lawmakers closed a $10 billion budget deficit -- focuses greater attention on redistricting.

Since Thursday, a series of hastily arranged hearings across the state has drawn large, boisterous crowds. In Brownsville, near the Mexican border, hundreds of protesters wearing ''Deny DeLay'' stickers shouted one session to an abrupt close.

Democrats also attacked an e-mail notice about the hearings, sent out by Republicans in Houston, with a photo of Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Democrat who is black. ''She'll be there to express her views,'' it said, without identifying her. ''Will you be there to express yours?''

The battle over redistricting has rendered the bipartisan comity in Austin made famous by former Gov. George W. Bush a distant memory. But to Republican strategists, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

''Bipartisanship is where both parties gang up against the people,'' said Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group, who said that split legislatures were more likely to raise taxes. ''I want to take the partisanship in Washington and drive it into the 50 states,'' added Mr. Norquist, who is closely watching the redistricting fights.

Some Texas Republicans -- including Governor Perry and Tom Craddick, who became speaker of the state House in January when the party took control for the first time in 130 years -- argue that the state's Congressional delegation, with 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans, does not reflect Texas voting patterns, in which nearly 60 percent of the votes cast for Congress last year were for Republicans.

Correction: July 7, 2003, Monday An article on Tuesday about redistricting in Texas misstated the period during which congressional districts have routinely been redrawn and misidentified the districts of Representatives Martin Frost and Lloyd Doggett. Redistricting after each census was the norm for much of the last century, but not for most of it. (The process became the norm after the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that large population imbalances between districts violated the principle of one person one vote.) Mr. Frost represents the Dallas-Fort Worth area (not Austin) and Mr. Doggett the Austin area (not Houston).